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CHALLENGE 
OF    WASTE 


by 
STUART  CHASE 


LEAGUE  FOR  INDUSTRIAL  DEMOCRACY 

70  Fifth  Ave.,  New  York 


LEAGUE  FOR  INDUSTRIAL  DEMOCRACY 

70  Fifth  Ave.,  New  York  City 


Object 

"EDUCATION  FOR  A  NEW  SOCIAL  ORDER  BASED 
ON  PRODUCTION  FOR  USE  AND  NOT  FOR  PROFIT" 


OFFICERS: 

(1921-1922) 
President,  Robert  Morss  Lovett       Chairman 
V  ice-Presidents, 


Chas.  P.  Steinmetz 
Evans  Clark 
Florence  Kelley 
Arthur  Gleason 


Executive     Commit- 
tee, Norman  Thomas 

Treasurer,  Stuart  Chase 

Secreta7-i/  and  Director  of  Re- 
search, Harry  W.  Laidler 


Roser  N.    Baldwin 
Anita  C.    BIocIc 
Lonis   B.  Bondin 
Albert  De  Silver 
Robert  W.  Dunn 
Ijonlse  Adams  Floyd 


execi'tivb:  committee 

I.ewi8  Gannett 
Felix    Grendon 
Jpssie  Wallare  Hnghan 
Nicholas  Kelley 
Cedric  Long 
WilUnm  P.  Montaene 


Mary  R.  Sanford 
Helen   Phelps   Stokes 
Arthur  Warner 
Sarel  Zlmand 
Bertha  Poole  Weyl 


Costa  Mesa,  Cal. 
Fanny  Bixby   Spencer 

Sausalito,  Cal. 
George   P.    West 

Washington,   D.    C. 
Frederick    C    Howe 
William  H,  .lolmston 
Helen    Sumner   Woodbury 

Atlanta,  Oa. 
Mary  Kaoul  Millis 

Chicago.  III. 
Paul  H.  Douglas 
Catherine  Liillie 

Indianapolis,  Ind 
Wiiliani    P.    Hapgood 

Baltimore,  Md. 
Rroadus    Mit^'Jiell 

Amherst,  Mass. 
Emma   S.    Dakin 

Boston,  Mass. 
Elizabeth  G.  Evans 
Helen    H.    Hodge 
James  Mackaye 
Charles    Zeublin 

Cambridge,  Mass. 
H.   W.    L.   Dana 
Arthur   Ilolcombe 


NATIONAI.    COUNCIL 

Wellesley.   Mass. 
Vida  D.   Scudder 

Kalamazoo,  Mich. 

A.  M.  Twld 

St.  Paul,  Minn. 
Sarah  T.  Colvin 
Arthur  1*  Sueur 

Orange,    N.    J. 
William  E.  Bohn 

Princeton.  N.  J. 
James  W.  Alexander 

New  York  City 
Katharine  -Anthony 
Norman  Hapgood 
Morris    Hillnuit 
Prince   Hopkins 
Winthrop  D.  Liane 
•Indah  L.  Mngnes 
Darwin  J.  Meserole 
William   C.   Pickens 
George  Soule 
Caro  Lloyd   Strobeil 
Alexander  Trachtenberg 
Thorstein  Veblen 

B.  C.  Vladeck 
Agnes  D.  Warbasse 


Katonah,  N.  Y. 
A.  J.  Mnste 

Rochester,  N.  Y. 
Paul  Blanshard 
N.  I.  Stone 

Cleveland,  O. 
Alice  P.  Gannett 
David  B.  Williams 

Columbus,  O. 
Edwin  L.  Clarke 

Clearfield,  Pa. 
John  Brophy 

Philadelphia,  Pa. 
Franklin  Edgerton 
Richard   W.   Hogue 
Alfred  Baker  Lewis 

jieading,  Pa. 
James  H.  Manrer 

Columbia,  8.   C. 
Josiah   Morse 

Madison,  Wis. 
Perc.v   M.   Dawson 


The 

CHALLENGE 
OF  W^ASTE 


By  STUART  CHASE 

Consulting  Accountant,  Labor  Bureau,  Inc. 

Formerly  Senior  Accountant,  Federal 
Trade  Commision 


Copyright,  1922,  by 

LEAGUE  FOR  INDUSTRIAL  DEMOCRACY 

70  Fifth  Ave.,  New  York 
■» 

No.  2  SPECIAL  RATES  FOR  BUNDLE  ORDERS  1922 


INTRODUCTION 

The  League  for  Industrial  Democracy  presents  to  the  public 
its  second  pamphlet  on  social  problems.  The  first  in  the  series, 
"Irrepressible  America,"  by  Dr.  Scott  Nearing,  analyzes  the 
social  philosophy  of  the  American  people  in  these  years  follow- 
ing the  world  war  and  points  out  the  educational  task  ahead. 

The  present  pamphlet  deals  with  the  wastes  involved  in 
producing  and  distributing  services  and  goods  under  the  system 
of  production  for  profit.  These  wastes,  as  the  author  points 
out,  are  becoming  ever  more  widely  acknowledged  and  the 
problem  at  issue  today  is  no  longer  their  existence  but  the 
extent  to  which  they  are  inherent  in  capitalist  production. 

The  author  has  served  as  accountant  and  partner  of  the 
firm  of  Harvey  S.  Chase  Company,  one  of  the  largest  firms 
of  public  accountants  in  New  England;  as  senior  accountant 
of  the  Federal  Trade  Commission,  and  as  head  of  the  accounting 
section  of  the  Government's  investigation  into  the  meat  pack- 
ing and  the  milk  industries.  He  is  at  present  consulting  ac- 
countant for  the  Labor  Bureau,  Inc.  In  these  capacities  he 
has  had  unusual  opportunities  to  observe  at  first  hand  the  con- 
duct of  the  nation's  business. 

Mr.  Chase  has  not  been  content  in  this  pamphlet  to  tabulate 
reported  wastes  in  industry,  but  has  sought  to  obtain  "an 
aeroplane  view"  of  the  whole  industrial  system,  and  to  raise  a 
number  of  fundamental  questions. 

What  constitutes  industrial  waste?  Why  is  it  important  to 
the  millions  of  people  in  America?  What  proportion  of  human 
energy  is  expended  today  in  the  production  of  "illth,"  and 
what  in  the  production  of  wealth?  How  does  industry  utilize 
its  present  equipment  of  men  and  machinery?  Given  adequate 
incentives,  can  an  industrial  system,  scientifically  organized  on 
the  basis  of  production  for  service,  eliminate  these  wastes  and 
can  such  a  system  develop  adequate  incentives?  These  and 
other  problems  he  has  attempted,  in  part  at  least,  to  answer. 

The  pamphlet  makes  no  pretense  at  finality,  for  no  final  con- 
clusions can  be  reached  in  regard  to  many  phases  of  this 
subject  without  years  of  painstaking  investigation  into  each 
important  industry.  Mr.  Chase  has,  however,  presented  a  series 
of  challenges  which  sooner  or  later  must  be  met. 

We  take  this  opportunity  to  thank  the  author  for  his 
contribution  and,  on  Mr.  Chase's  and  our  behalf,  to  express  our 
appreciation  to  those  members  and  friends  of  the  League  who 
have  helped  in  its  preparation.  The  League  plans  in  coming 
pamphlets  to  deal  with  "Industrial  Incentives"  and  several 
other  questions  raised  in  this  monograph. 

HARRY  W.  LAIDLER, 
Director  of  Research,  L.  I.  D. 


HC 

■     1063 

THE  CHALLENGE 
OF  WASTE 

By  Stuart  Chase 
_s 

^  The  wastefulness  of  the  present  industrial  system  has  long 

^      been  subject  to  attack.      Not  only  have  opponents  of  the 

'        existing  order  drawn  attention  to  its  inefficiency,  but  business 

y^      men  themselves  have  from  time , to  time  denounced  certain 

f       leakages  of  the  system  as  indefensible.  Thus  Mr,  Hoover  has 

gathered  together  a  group  of  engineers  who  have  carefully 

ro      studied  the  operation  of  six  industries — textiles,  printing, 

^      shoes,  metal  trades,  men's  clothing  and  the  building  trades — 

publishing,  as  a  result  of  their  investigation,  a  remarkable 

symposium  on  the  preventible  wastes  in  each'. 

^  THE  LESSON  OF  THE  WAR 

During  the  war,  governments  both  here  and  abroad  were 
driven  to  a  sharp  realization  of  the  extent  of  economic  waste. 
>     The  maintenance  of  "business  as  usual"  made  it  impossible 
^     to  mobilize  and  equip  a  fighting  force  and  at  the  same  time 
*    to  support  a  civilian  population,    "Business  as  usual"  was, 
^    therefore,  forced  to  give  way  to  a  co-ordinated  plan,  crude, 
but  in  certain  respects  very  effective.     The  industrial  re- 
^    sources  of  the  nation  were  surveyed — both  as  to  raw  mate- 
^    rials  and  plant  facilities — its  productive  possibilities  meas- 
Sl   ured,  and  its  major  requirements  calculated.    This  was  done 
hastily  and  often  inaccurately,  but  it  sufficed  to  bring  about 
a  tremendous  release  of  labor  power  and  raw  materials  into 
war  industries  and  so-called  "essential  industries."    The  war 
administration  placed  the  transportation  system  on  a  national, 
unified  basis  with  competitive  hauls  eliminated.     It  shut  off 
capital  from  non-essential  industries.     It  restricted  the  con- 
sumption of  luxuries,  encouraged  certain  crops,  rationed  and 
husbanded  coal,  reduced  the  output  of  excessive  grades  and 
styles,  and  conserved  necessary  materials. 

>  Federated  American  Engineering  Societies,  Committee  on  the  Elimination 
of   Waste    (Hoover   Engineers),    Waste  in  Industry. 


^ 


245893 


As  a  result,  the  United  States  was  able  to  support  five 
million  of  its  most  vigorous  workers  in  productive  idleness, 
supply  them  with  unlimited  munitions  of  war,  transport 
great  numbers  of  them  overseas  in  American  bottoms,  and 
still  maintain  the  population  at  probably  the  highest  average 
standard  of  well-being  ever  enjoyed.  In  other  words,  with 
perhaps  a  third  of  all  industrial  workers  either  in  the  army 
or  engaged  in  producing  munitions  of  war  of  no  consumable 
value,  the  remaining  two-thirds,  by  operating  on  a  co-ordi- 
nated plan,  produced  enough  to  supply  the  army,  the  muni- 
tions workers  and  themselves  with  the  necessities  of  life 
on  an  unprecedented  scale !  The  wastes  of  productive  effort 
under  the  reign  of  normalcy  were  thus  proved  beyond  all 
gainsaying. 

FUEL  CONTROL 

Take  coal,  for  instance.  Mr.  Robert  W.  Bruere  has  given 
us  an  excellent  picture  of  how  the  war  exposed  waste  in 
this  basic  industry.^ 

"From  the  high  central  tower  of  the  Fuel  Administra- 
tion the  people  of  the  United  States  for  the  first  time 
caught  a  fleeting  glimpse  of  the  coal  industry  as  a  whole 
and  of  the  relation  it  bears  to  national  and  international 
industrial  life.  .  .  .  When  America  entered  the  war, 
she  resembled,  with  respect  to  her  primary  source  of 
mechanical  energy,  a  municipality  dependent  for  its 
water  supply  upon  11,000  separate  wells,  owned  and 
operated  primarily  in  their  individual  interests  by  thou- 
sands of  enterprising  individuals,  with  hundreds  of 
separate  systems  jostling  in  the  highways  that  needed  to 
be  kept  clear  for  soldiers  and  guns ;  its  people  bidding 
against  one  another,  offering  fabulous  prices  for  water, 
yet  parched  with  thirst.  ,  .  .  With  11,000  coal  mines 
in  operation,  the  engines  of  the  nation  were  running  cold 
for  lack  of  fuel." 

Mr.  Bruere  should  know,  for  he  sat  in  that  high  central 
tower.  He  goes  on  to  tell  how,  for  the  period  of  the  war, 
the  coal  industry  functioned  as  a  co-operative  public  service. 
The  Fuel  Administration  went  about  its  task  precisely  as 
an  engineer  would  tackle  the  job  of  converting  11,000  wells 
into  a  modern  system  of  water  supply.     It  dealt  with  the 

2  Bruere,   The  Coming  of  Coal. 


coal  fields  as  a  single  great  reservoir.  It  worked  out  a  budget 
covering  the  needs  of  the  essential  industries  and  of  the 
domestic  consumer.  It  made  maps  (and  acted  on  them) 
charting  the  coal-producing  and  coal-consuming  territories, 
'divided  the  nation  into  zones,  eliminated  cross-hauling  and 
thus  "balanced  the  load"  between  the  demands  of  consumers 
and  the  capacity  of  producers.  Where  only  552,000,000  tons 
of  bituminous  coal  had  been  produced  in  1917,  the  Fuel 
Administration's  budget  for  the  year  ending  March,  1919, 
called  for  624.000,000  tons.  By  December  21,  1918,  actual 
shipments  to  tidewater  were  9  per  cent  ahead  of  the  budget ! 
The  Great  Lakes  program  called  for  28,000,000  tons  of 
cargo  coal;  a  total  of  28,153,000  tons  was  supplied.  "Such 
results  were  possible  only  because  of  complete  control  of 
shipments,  and  the  full  information  on  which  to  proceed. 
It  was  an  amazing  and  illuminating  demonstration  of  the 
fact  that  our  greatest  national  resource  could  be  administered 
for  the  benelit  of  the  whole  nation.  It  was  no  longer  a  possi- 
bility, the  thing  had  been  done." 

Broadly  speaking,  however,  the  United  States  was  only 
an  amateur  in  the  matter  of  co-ordinated  control,  as  was  to 
be  expected  from  its  late  entrance  into  the  war.  Sir  Leo 
Chiozza-Money,  the  noted  English  statistician  and  economist, 
has  written  an  exhaustively  documented  accounf  of  how  the 
British  Empire  co-ordinated  its  industrial  life  as  the  one 
method  of  avoiding  defeat  and  humiliation.  He  constructs 
a  telling  outline  of  a  whole  nation  turning  from  the  play- 
things of  stock  exchanges,  haggling  of  markets,  and  com- 
petitive advertising,  to  the  stark,  underlying  realities  of  pro- 
ducing and  delivering  food,  coal,  clothing,  ships  and  muni- 
tions— on  the  principle  that  a  straight  line  is  the  shortest 
distance  between  two  points. 

War,  as  we  shall  see,  is  in  itself  the  quintessence  of  waste, 
but  the  war  just  passed  has  taught  at  least  this  one  important 
lesson:  Given  enough  incentive,  it  is  possible  for  human 
intelligence  to  rTse  tatkeJicighf  of  organising  and  controllvng 
a  vast  industrial  system  to  a  perfectly  tangible  end.  Though 
the  end  was  death  and  the  vainglory  of  "national  honor," 
men  there  were,  and  minds  there  were,  big  enough  to  seize 
the  whole  industrial  structure — groggy  with  profit-seeking — 
and  shake  it  and  hammer  it  into  a  workable  vehicle   for 

3  Chiozza  Money,  The  Triumph  of  NationaUzation. 


producing  given  things  at  given  places  in  a  given  time.  Yes, 
the  "thing  has  been  done."  And  the  importance  of  having 
done  it,  from  the  standpoint  of  the  conception  of  waste  now 
to  be  outhned,  is  indeed  great. 

WHAT  IS  WASTE? 

In  spite  of  the  fact  that  industrial  waste  has  long  been  a 
matter  of  interest  and  speculation,  it  has  never  been  sub- 
jected to  much  critical  analysis.  It  has  for  the  most  part 
been  developed  as  a  patchwork  of  uncor related  observations. 
What  has  been  particularly  lacking  has  been  the  absence  of 
any  reliable  standard  by  which  waste  may  be  measured. 

People  tend  to  think  of  waste — when  they  think  of  it  at  all 
— in  two  categories,  garbage  cans  and  Taylor  systems. 
They  think  of  waste  paper,  refuse,  sewage,  odds  and  ends 
generally.  They  think  of  the  patriotic  exertions  of  fellow 
townsmen  beseeching  them  to  win  the  war  by  baling  their 
Sunday  newspapers,  or  by  saving  their  peachstones.  The 
Department  of  Commerce  instituted  a  waste  reclamation 
service  to  promote  just  this  sort  of  thing.  And,  of  course, 
waste  of  this  nature  is  a  real  economic  problem.  There  are 
many  interesting  methods  abroad,  technical  and  otherwise, 
for  turning  refuse  normally  thrown  away  into  valuable  prod- 
ucts. But  when  all  is  said  and  done,  this  type  of  waste  is 
only  a  drop  in  the  bucket  from  the  standpoint  of  an  aeroplane 
view  of  the  whole  industrial  system. 

Business  men  think  of  waste  as  synonymous  with  "ineffi- 
ciency," connoting  in  turn  all  the  hue  and  cry  of  the  past 
ten  years  in  pursuit  of  the  goddess  efficiency.  How  many 
youths  have  knelt — their  correspondence  school  books  in 
their  hands — before  this  deity.  Pep,  efficiency,  success — the 
holy  trinity. 

But  efficiency,  thus  pursued,  is  only  another  method  of 
increasing  profit  under  the  price  system.  It  deals  with 
means,  not  ends.  It  provides  methods,  and  often  very 
sound  ones,  for  reducing  costs,  increasing  output,  and  getting 
to  windward  of  one's  competitors.  But  it  is  to  be  doubted  if 
business  men  would  be  interested  in  a  universal  installation 
of  efficiency  methods  resulting  in  lower  industrial  costs,  but 
unchanged  profit  levels.  The  widespread  use  of  what  Veb- 
len  calls  "business-like  sabotage"  makes  it  perfectly  evident 


that  efficiency  from  the  social  point  of  view  is  never  contem- 
plated for  a  moment.  The  captain  of  industry  uses  efficiency 
devices  if  they  promise  to  increase  his  profit.  On  the  other 
hand,  he  will  strangulate  an  industry — cane  sugar  for  in- 
stance—if that  offers  a  better  chance  of  strengthening  his 
balance  sheet.  Efficiency  is  only  one  of  the  weapons  in  his 
armory.    It  may  be  used  for  social  or  for  anti-social  ends. 

Not  in  cost  systems,  adding  machines  or  even  discredited 
methods  of  brick-laying,  is  the  heart  of  the  problem  of  waste 
to  be  found,  any  more  than  in  the  garbage  pail.  An  effici- 
ency system  can  be  introduced  into  a  factory  which  manu- 
factures poison  gas  or  patent  medicines.  A  sound  theory  of 
waste,  as  we  shall  see,  would  refuse  to  recognize  the  necessity 
of  making  poison  gas  or  quack  remedies  at  all. 

No.  The  question  of  waste  must  be  approached  with  fresh 
eyes  which  see  the  economic  process  as  a  whole,  which  see 
particularly  the  physical  stuff  of  things  under  the  meta- 
physics of  money  and  credit  and  price.  The  Fuel  Admin- 
istration from  its  high  central  tower  did  not  cast  a  budget 
in  terms  of  money,  but  one  in  terms  of  tons  of  coal.  Dollar 
bills  under  a  boiler  never  raised  a  pound  of  steam. 

There  is  of  course  no  department  of  life  or  industry  in 
which,  from  some  more  or  less  logical  viewpoint,  statistics 
of  waste  could  not  be  compiled  —  heart-rending  statistics. 
But  with  the  shifting  and  changing  of  these  viewpoints,  all 
hope  of  an  authentic  case  against  waste — and  particularly 
its  quantitative  measurement — tends  to  vanish.  Thus  the 
vegetarian  points  out  with  unimpeachable  accuracy  that  for 
one  unit  of  human  food  value  found  in  beef,  sixteen  units 
have  been  sacrificed  in  the  corn  which  feeds  the  steer.  Here 
is  a  very  wasteful  process  indeed  from  a  certain  standpoint, 
but  the  stubborn  fact  remains  that  most  Americans  demand 
beef.  Again,  the  anti-nicotine  advocate  appals  us  with  the 
sheer  waste  involved  in  growing,  manufacturing  and  sell- 
ing a  minor  poison.  But  tobacco  has  reached  the  position  of 
a  necessity  in  the  workingman's  budget.  It  cannot  be  elimi- 
nated out  of  hand.  Again,  some  inquisitive  citizen  with  a 
mathematical  turn  of  mind  will  calculate  the  potential  horse 
power  of  all  the  rivers  of  a  continent — compare  it  with  the 
developed  water-power — and  write  the  balance  off  as  waste, 
in  the  Sunday  supplement.  The  scientific  woods  are  full  of 
such  charming  followers  of  the  Absolute. 


It  is  the  very  diversity  of  these  standpoints  which  gives  us 
pause,  and  makes  it  imperative  that  we  find  if  possible  a 
lowest  denominator  which  will  pass  the  pragmatic  test  as  a 
genuine  measure  of  waste. 


THE  WANTS  OF  MAN 

Before  the  deficiency  of  a  thing  can  be  measured,  a  stand- 
ard of  judgment  must  be  set  up.  Waste  cannot  be  measured 
or  even  condemned,  unless  the  clear  potentialities  of  a  non- 
waste  method  are  established.  Two  hundred  years  ago — 
before  the  first  steam  engine — there  was  no  waste  in  pump- 
ing out  coal  mines  by  hand.  The  better  method  lay  in  the 
womb  of  time. 

In  the  last  analysis,  tJic  sole  aim  of  an  economic  system  is 
to  supply  the  wafnts  of  man.  It  is  quite  obvious  that  the 
present  system  is  mainly  concerned  with  supplying  money 
profits  to  certain  favored  individuals,  with  the  satisfaction 
of  wants  coming  in  the  back  door  as  a  by-product.  But  by 
and  large,  from  century  to  century,  men  work  in  order  that 
they  may  eat — (and  sometimes  for  the  fun  of  working).  If 
we  can  define  the  wants  of  man,  we  have  then  a  yardstick 
which  may  be  clapped  down  over  any  industrial  system  to 
determine : 

(1)  How  far  the  system  is  concerned  with  producing 
such  wants. 

(2)  How  efficiently  it  uses  available  technical  knowledge 
to  produce  them. 

(3)  What  proportion  of  the  population  are  faiHng  to 
receive  the  quota  as  defined. 

What  are  the  wants  of  men? 

Here  the  cynic  waits  for  the  whole  theory  to  collapse  on 
its  own  threshold.  What  god  or  demon  will  draw  a  ring 
around  the  wants  of  man  and  yoke  to  the  statistician's  plow? 
Agreed,  gentlemen.  The  wants  of  man  are  impossible  of 
exact  definition.  They  are  constantly  growing,  shrinking, 
changing.  In  a  certain  sense  they  are  different  for  every 
living  person.  One  man's  meat  is  sometimes  another  man's 
poison.  Any  allowable  definition  of  the  wants  of  man  must 
be  built  without  a  roof — it  must  be  open  to  the  sky. 

What  does  man  want?  Life!  A  more  abundant  life! 
Bread  and  beauty,   if   you  please.     Our   cynic  as  well  as 

8 


our  artist  must  agree  to  this.  What  constitutes  a  more 
abundant  Hfe?  More  bread,  more  beauty.  And  we  cannot 
permit  cynics  and  artists  to  argue  that  this  does  not  include 
certain  unchanging  classifications  of  wants  which  the  facts 
as  to  man's  place  in  nature  render  imperative.  Thus  every- 
one must  eat— and  he  must  eat  certain  combinations  of  pro- 
tein, fats,  carbohydrates,  together  with  the  accessory  vita- 
mines,  or  he  sickens  and  dies,  and  his_  aesthetic  wants  be- 
come a  matter  of  very  secondary  consideration.  He  must 
in  certain  climates  have  clothes  to  wear  to  keep  him  from 
cold  or  heat,  and  in  nearly  all  climates  he  must  have  a  house 
or  shelter  of  some  sort  in  which  to  live,  and  particularly  to 
protect  his  children. 

Food,  shelter  and  clothing  comprise  the  most  elementary 
wants  of  man.  After  them  follow  other  classifications  al- 
most equally  essential  to  mankind  in  civilized  communities. 
The  development  of  communication  between  people — chan- 
nels without  which  human  society  is  impossible--an  alphabet, 
a  language,  books,  education  are  all  imperative  wants  of 
man.  Religion  of  some  sort  he  wants.  Art  he  demands — 
music,  painting,  architecture  and  design,  poetry,  literature 
and  the  theatre.  Recreation  and  play  he  wants  —  dancing, 
running,  swimming,  mountain  climbing,  games.  The  latter 
is  a  very  fundamental  want,  for  the  body  declines  rapidly 
if  it  is  not  satisfied.  Health  he  wants,  and  the  services  of 
doctors,  nurses,  hospitals,  sanitary  measures.  Love  he  wants 
— not  only  sexual,  but  all  the  pleasant  relationships  of  fam- 
ily and  friends.  Some  men  just  want  to  know.  They  are 
moved  by  a  divine  curiosity.  We  call  what  they  do  pure 
science  and  it  is  one  of  the  most  precious  of  man's  wants. 

A  system  of  production  which  turns  out  the  facilities  for 
satisfying  these  wants  in  reasonable  abundance  and  in  some 
sort  of  relative  balance,  can  be  taken  as  a  non-wasteful  sys- 
tem so  far  as  its  aims  are  concerned.  The  technical  efficiency 
of  the  process  involved,  and  whether  or  not  unnecessary  la- 
bor energy  is  consumed  therein,  is  a  further  question  which 
demands  attention,  and  which  we  will  discuss  presently. 

THE  MINIMUM  BUDGET 

These  ten  fundamental  wants  of  man,  broadly  interpreted, 
cover  practically  the  whole  field.  The  only  limitation  which 
a  theory  of  waste  can  put  upon  them  is  that  the  quality  of  the 


goods  and  services  which  go  to  the  satisfaction  of  these  wants 
should  be  reasonably  sound  and  wholesome,  free  from  adul- 
teration and  degradation,  and  that  the  more  ornate  and  com- 
plex goods  and  services  should  not  be  produced  until  the 
simple  and  more  basic  wants  have  been  met.  In  respect  to 
this  latter  proviso,  we  already  have  an  excellent  quantitative 
list  in  the  minimum  Budget  of  Health  and  Decency  compiled 
by  the  United  States  Department  of  Labor.  This  budget 
is  designed  to  meet  the  personal  wants  of  a  family  of  five 
persons.  It  lists  several  hundred  articles  of  food,  clothing, 
shelter  and  incidentals — lists  them  in  terms  of  physical  units. 
It  is  possible — and  in  fact  it  has  been  done  in  part — to  multi- 
ply out  each  item  on  this  family  budget  for  all  the  21  million 
theoretical  families  of  five  in  America,  and  thus  roughly  de- 
termine the  gross  requirements  of  certain  basic  wants.  In 
1921,  for  instance,  we  needed,  on  this  basis,  about: 
3,800,000,000  square  yards  of  cotton  goods; 
635,000,000  square  yards  of  woolen  goods; 

95,000,000  dozen  pairs  of  stockings; 
290,000,000  pairs  of  shoes; 

11,000,000,000  pounds  of  meat; 
5,000,000,000  pounds  of  sugar. 

Perhaps  90  per  cent  by  weight  of  all  our  physical  wants 
can  be  reduced  to  perfectly  tangible  commodities,  in  per- 
fectly tangible  quantities  up  to  a  certain  stage  of  manufac- 
ture. Individual  preferences  will  tend  to  determine  the  ulti- 
mate stages. 

Here  then  is  a  possible  standard — rough,  un-roofed,  but 
capable,  as  will  be  shown,  of  measuring  the  wastes  of  the 
present  economic  system.  It  should  be  observed  that  the 
economic  system  as  we  have  discussed  it  here  comprises  all 
human  effort  which  goes  into  the  production  of  goods  and 
services — the  labor  of  the  housewife,  the  artist,  the  scientist 
and  the  priest,  as  well  as  that  of  the  industrial  worker  and 
the  farmer. 

OUTPUT  OF  PRESENT  SYSTEM 

From  the  standpoint  of  the  ten  fundamental  wants  here- 
in enumerated,  it  is  immediately  apparent  that  (1)  a  portion 
of  the  output  of  the  present  system  goes  to  satisfy  those 
wants;  that  (2)  another  portion  can  only  be  classed  as  pro- 
ducts seriously  detrimental  to  man  and  quite  outside  the 

10 


category  of  wants;  and  that  (3)  the  remainder  falls  into 
an  intermediary  classification  consisting  of  items  which  do 
no  particular  good  and  no  particular  harm  to  the  consumer 

^  In  the  first  class  fall  foodstuffs,  textiles,  housing,  schools, 
parks,  medical  attendance,  concerts,  highways,  laboratories, 
and  so  forth.  . 

In  the  second  class  fall  many  patent  medicines,  distilled 
spirits,  opium,  machine  guns,  poison  gas,  prostitution,  gam- 
bling and  speculation,  quackery,  super-luxuries,  dishonest  ad- 
vertising, "Billy  Sundayism"  and  all  else  that  breaks  and  dis- 
torts the  bodies  and  the  minds  of  men. 

In  the  third  class  fall  chewing  gum,  much  of  our  adver- 
tisements, fashions,  moving  pictures,  tobacco,  best  sellers 
and  the  like. 

It  is  to  be  noted  that  the  second  class,  from  the  standard 
erected,  is  almost  totally  composed  of  waste,  and  the  effort 
concerned  therein  worse  than  thrown  away.  The  third  class 
provides  a  rich  field  for  waste  research,  but  cannot  be  ruled 
out  in  toto. 

A  further  qualification  is  necessary  in  respect  to  the  hrst 
class.  While  from  a  pure  classification  standpoint  this  group 
contains  no  waste  (barring  the  question  of  technical  pro- 
cesses to  be  discussed  later),  as  a  matter  of  fact  it  is  found 
that  many  of  these  goods  and  services  are  debased.  Thus 
foodstuffs  may  contain  deleterious  poisons  to  preserve  and 
sell  them,  clothing  may  be  shoddy,  houses  badly  built,  art  and 
recreation  commercialized,  the  schools  used  to  stifle  the 
creative  instinct,  religion  corrupted.  It  becomes  necessary, 
therefore,  to  subject  the  first  class  as  well  as  the  third  to 
analysis  for  possible  sources  of  waste. 

Let  us  add  one  further  note  on  the  output  of  the  first  class. 
If  enough  basic  necessities — say  in  the  terms  of  the  minimum 
budget  of  health  and  decency— were  produced  and  distri- 
buted to  maintain  the  last  family  in  America  at  the  level  of 
that  budget,  we  would  not  be  so  greatly  concerned  with  the 
wasted  effort  expended  in  classes  two  and  three.  Provided 
there  was  enough  to  go  around — and  that  nobody  was  in 
actual  physical  want — we  could  look  with  a  certain  philoso- 
phical toleration  on  the  output  of  such  superfluities  as  to- 
bacco, chewing  gum,  steam  yachts,  cosmetics  and  even  patent 
medicines.     But  what  shall  we  say  if  it  develops  that  the 

11 


output  of  basic  necessities  in  class  one  is  at  the  present  time 
utterly  inadequate?  What  if  the  great  majority  of  American 
families  are  now  living  below  the  minimum  budget  of  health 
and  decency?  Then  the  indictment  of  waste  in  the  other 
two  groups  takes  on  a  new  and  sinister  aspect. 

IS  THERE  ENOUGH  TO  GO  AROUND? 

According  to  the  figures  of  the  National  Bureau  of  Eco- 
nomic Research  recently  made  public — undoubtedly  the  most 
impartial  and  authoritative  figures  of  national  income  ever 
compiled* — it  appears  that  from  1913  to  1919,  the  total  money 
income  of  the  people  of  this  country,  if  divided  equally 
among  them  on  the  basis  of  a  theoretical  family  of  five  per- 
sons, would  just  about  equal  the  money  cost  of  the  mini- 
mum budget  in  each  year,  after  allowing  a  percentage  for 
necessary  saving.  That  is,  each  family  would  get,  on  the 
basis  of  an  equal  division,  a  money  income  of  from  $1,400 
in  1913  to  about  $2,500  in  1919.  The  items  of  the  mini- 
mum budget  priced  year  by  year  as  the  cost  of  living  rose, 
follow  substantially  the  same  curve  from  $1,300  to  $2,550.° 
This  national  income  in  dollars,  needless  to  say,  included  the 
purchasing  of  goods  in  all  three  classes,  so  it  cannot  be  held 
that  there  was  a  sufficiency  of  class  one  products  bought  back 
by  the  income  receivers.  To  make  matters  worse,  the 
Bureau  found,  as  a  matter  of  course,  that  nothing  like  an 
equality  of  income  obtained,  but  rather  that  5  per  cent  of 
the  families  received  from  20  to  30  per  cent  of  the  total  in- 
come. This  immediately  operated  to  plunge  the  average  of 
the  remaining  95  per  cent  of  the  families  below  the  line  of 
the  minimum  budget,  even  had  their  income  gone  for  noth- 
ing but  basic  necessities. 

When  Senator  Kenyon  tells  us  in  his  housing  report  in 


*  Mitchell  and  others,  Income  in  the  United  States,  1921.  N.  Y. :  Harcourt 
&    Brace. 

°  In  round  amounts  the  figures  year  by  year  are  as  follows :    (The  average 

income  per  family  has  been  reduced  20  per  cent  in  each  year  to  allow  for  new 
construction.) 

For  a  family  of  five  persons. 

Year                                                      Average  Income  Cost  of  Living 

1913  ?1.420  ?1,280 

1914  1,340  1,320 

1915  1,430  1,350 

1916  1,780  1,510 

1917  2,090  1,820 

1918  2,340  2,230 

1919  2,480  2,550 

12 


1920,'  that  16  million  people  in  America  did  not  live  in 
houses  fit  for  human  beings ;  when  we  read  the  alarming 
statistics  of  undernourishment  in  school  children ;  when  we 
walk  through  the  slums  of  a  great  city,  through  the  poor 
white  sections  of  the  South,  or  through  a  coal  mine  district, 
we  know  that  these  income  figures  of  the  Bureau  only 
state  the  obvious.  For  those  who  have  eyes  to  see,  it  is  a 
commonplace  that  America  does  not  produce  and  distribute 
today  sufficient  basic  necessities  to  keep  half  of  its  families 
at  the  level  of  the  minimum  budget  of  health  and  decency. 
The  nezv  and  significant  thing  about  the  Bureau's  figures  is 
the  fact  that  if  we  took  all  the  excess  income  away  from  the 
rich  and  distributed  it  equally  to  the  poor,  still  the  minimum 
budget  would  not  be  met  unless  practically  every  cent  were 
expended  for  the  basic  necessities  of  class  one,  and  the  out- 
put of  classes  two  and  three  eliminated  altogether.  In  other 
words,  if  we  only  produced  basic  wants  and  distributed  them 
equally,  there  would  only  be  about  enough  to  go  around  on 
the  basis  of  the  minimum  budget.  Tliejieces^itX  of  not  o^^^y 
eliminating  non-essential  goods  and  services,  but  of  speeding 
up  the  production  of  essentials. at ihe  same  time,  is  thus  made 
•mianifest.        " 

THE  EXTENT  OF  WASTE 

We  have  erected  a  rough  standard  to  measure  the  wants 
of  men.  We  have  in  a  general  way  classified  the  output  of 
the  present  economic  system.  Our  next  problem  is  that  of 
developing,  if  possible,  a  method  for  measuring  the  extent 
of  industrial  waste. 

We  have  already  seen  how  the  prevailing  system  is  honey- 
combed with  wasteful  goods  and  services.  These  have  a 
market,  however,  or  they  would  not  be  produced.  Some- 
where people  are  found  who  can  be  prevailed  upon  to  buy 
them,  and  the  psychology  of  this  forcing  of  products  is  a 
very  interesting  subject  in  itself.  Money  therefore  takes  no 
cognizance  of  wealth  or  "illth"  (to  use  Ruskin's  phrase),  but 
reduces  all  output  to  a  single  unit.  A  dollar  will  buy  equally 
ten  loaves  of  bread  or  a  dose  of  opium.  It  becomes  largely 
meaningless  for  the  purpose  we  have  in  hand.  Furthermore, 
the  extreme  lack  of  dependability  in  the  value  of  the  dollar 
in  terms  of  other  commodities   from  year  to  year,  raises 

"  Reconstruction   and    Construction,    Senate    Document,    March,    1920. 

13 


further  objections  to  its  use  in  these  premises.  Imagine  for 
instance  trying  to  write  the  economic  history  of  -Russia  dur- 
ing the  past  five  years  in  terms  of  the  Russian  ruble. 

Cutting  under  the  shadow  of  money  to  the  reahty  of  the 
underlying  physical  factors,  it  is  seen  that  what  really  hap- 
pens when  society  maintains  a  harmful  industry,  is  that  the 
labor  power  of  a  large  number  of  people  is  diverted  from 
the  production  of  goods  to  the  production  of  ills,  that  much 
good  material  in  the  shape  of  plants,  machinery,  storehouses, 
paper-stock,  industrial  alcohol  and  good  drinking  water,  is 
so  diverted,  and  that  the  channels  of  transportation  and  dis- 
tribution are  clogged  with  the  shipment  and  sale  of  an  article 
which  satisfies  no  real  human  want.  Plant,  machinery,  and 
warehouses  can  all  be  converted  back  in  turn  to  labor  energy 
or  the  natural  resources  which  went  into  their  construction — 
such  things  as  iron  ore,  standing  timber,  crude  oil,  granite, 
waterpower  and  what  not. 

The  quantitative  measurement  of  waste  therefore  resolves 
itself  into  two  basic  factors  : 

1.  Energy  of  hand  and  brain  devoted  to  ends  which  do  not 
supply  the  wants  of  man. 

2.  Natural  resources,  raw  materials,  and  power  similarly 
diverted.  (Perhaps,  in  the  last  analysis,  natural  re- 
sources are  convertible  into  labor  power  by  virtue  of 
the  fact  that  it  takes  labor  power  to  render  them  use- 
able). 

REDUCING  WASTE  TO  LABOR  HOURS 

Opinion  may  well  differ,  and  methods  vary  widely  as  to 
the  most  effective  means  of  exhibiting  waste  on  this  basis. 
A  possible  method  suggested,  however,  is  to  show  the  ap- 
proximate number  of  workers  employed  directly  in  an  anti- 
social industry,  and  so  far  as  can  be  determined,  those  em- 
ployed indirectly;  the  labor  hours  they  expend  in  a  year; 
and  the  approximate  acreage  of  good  standing  timber,  the 
tonnage  of  coal,  iron  ore,  copper  ore,  oil  and  what  not,  that 
the  industry  has  destroyed  in  erecting  its  plant  and  carrying 
on  its  current  operations.  Considered  with  such  measure- 
ment, the  amount  of  horsepower  or  similar  energy  units 
wasted  may  be  effectively  employed  —  though  again  such 
energy  rests  finally  on  an  original  expenditure  of  labor  and 
raw  materials. 

14 


That  such  measurement  can  only  be  rough  approxima- 
tions, goes  without  saying,  but  rough  as  they  are,  they  will 
show  the  cost  of  the  industry  to  society  as  no  money  values 
can  ever  hope  to  do.  Furthermore  they  are  cast  in  such 
form  as  to  be  readily  converted  into  estimates  of  what  this 
wasted  effort  might  mean  in  another  industry  which  func- 
tioned directly  towards  the  satisfaction  of  the  wants  of  man. 

On  this  basis,  the  wastes  of  a  given  industry  necessarily 
include  not  only  the  direct  labor  and  materials  used,  but  the 
labor  and  materials  expended  by  the  transportation  system 
in  handling  the  product,  and  the  distribution  system  in  sell- 
ing it — not  forgetting  advertising  outlays  in  labor  hours  and 
good  white  paper. 

We  submit  therefore  that  the  method  which  should  be  em- 
ployed in  evaluating  waste,  is  to  determine  what  the  waste- 
ful process  costs  society  in  terms  of  lost  labor  hours,  lost 
materials,  and  lost  horsepower,  and  that  the  most  effective 
way  of  showing  the  loss  is  to  calculate  what  it  might  mean 
if  utilized  in  furnishing  wealth — instead  of — "illth."  A 
rough  calculation  shows  for  instance  that  the  elimination 
of  the  patent  medicine  industry  would  release  energy  enough 
to  give  every  child  in  the  country  between  7  and  13  years 
of  age,  six  months  extra  schooling. 

"ILLTH" 

What  the  aggregate  output  of  "illth"  amounts  to  in  Amer- 
ica has  never  been  determined.  We  only  know  in  a  general 
way  the  kinds  of  things  and  services  which  go  to  make  it 
up.  First  of  all  there  are  super-luxuries  —  such  things  as 
palatial  establishments,  unHmited  servants,  costly  jewelry, 
luxurious  banquets  and  entertainments,  furs,  motors,  private 
yachts,  etc. — things  which  He  outside  the  range  of  comforts 
and  conveniences.  Then  there  is  the  vast  output  of  advertis- 
ing which,  in  1916,  was  said  to  aggregate  over  2  billions  a 
year.  (It  must  be  double  that  by  now.)  Advertising  has  a 
distinct  function  in  letting  us  know  about  new  products,  and 
about  coming  events.  Only  a  small  percentage  of  modern 
advertising  is  concerned  with  this  necessary  end,  however. 
The  bulk  of  it  is  composed  of  what  can  only  be  termed  loud 
nasal  lying  as  to  the  relative  merits  of  competitive  products 
as   like  as  two   peas,   or,   more   sinister   still,   the   forcing 

15 


upon  us  of  things  which  we  do  not  need,  and  which  often 
hurt  not  only  our  pocketbooks,  but  our  bodies  and  our  souls 
as  well.  Think  of  the  beauty  which  sign  boards  mock  and 
destroy.  (There  are  5,000  sign  boards  on  the  east  side 
of  the  Pennsylvania  tracks  between  Washington  and  New 
York.    I  counted  them  one  afternoon.) 

Then  there  is  the  waste  of  armaments,  a  self-evident  leak- 
age against  which  even  business  men  protest.  They  cost  us 
two  to  three  billions  a  year  at  the  present  time  in  America. 
This  is  enough  to  cover  the  country  with  300,000  miles  of 
good  macadam  roads. 

There  is  the  vast  waste  inherent  in  abrupt  changes  in 
fashions,  engineered  by  a  little  group  of  designers,  who  hold 
to  the  sound  principle  that  quick  fashions  mean  quick  turn- 
over. There  are  insurance  schemes,  stock  exchanges,  law 
courts,  banks,  insofar  as  these  activities  serve  no  human 
want.  There  is  chewing  gum,  adulterated  confectionery  and 
drinks.  There  is  the  great  toll  of  alcohol  and  drugs. 
There  is  the  very  considerable  industry  concerned  with  the 
production  of  gambling  devices.  There  is  the  time-honored 
industry  of  prostitution.  There  are  all  quacks  and  mediums, 
and  cure-alls,  and  get-rich-quick  performers.  And  probably 
a  considerable  percentage  of  all  shows  and  entertainments 
are  an  adulteration  of  genuine  recreation  and  art. 

THE  LUXURY  BILL 

In  the  single  category  of  luxuries  alone,  the  Secretary  of 
the  Treasury  estimated  that,  in  1919,  the  total  luxury  bill 
of  the  country  was  22  billions  of  dollars.  A  careful  scrutiny 
of  these  detail  figures,  however,  shows  that  about  half  of  this 
total  would  fall  under  the  head  of  reasonable  comforts,  and 
could  not,  according  to  our  definition,  be  classified  as  waste 
at  all.  But  a  cool  eleven  billions  still  remained  as  wanton 
extravagance.  Eleven  billions  in  money  in  1919  was  the  ap- 
proximate equivalent  of  the  annual  efifort  of  about  seven 
million  workers.  If  six  or  seven  millions  of  our  total  work- 
ing population  are  concerned  with  the  production  and  distri- 
bution of  super-luxuries  alone,  it  is  not  improbable  that  the 
total  labor  force  concerned  with  all  "illth"  is  at  least  twice 
that  amount  or   from  twelve  to   fourteen   million   workers 

16 


out  of  an  aggregate  working  population  of  forty-two  mil- 
lions.   (Census  of  1920.) 

THE  WASTE  OF  IDLENESS 

We  have  considered  in  some  detail  the  waste  involved  in 
producing  goods  and  services  which  do  not  satisfy  any  real 
human  want.  This  is  the  first  major  indictment  against  the 
efficiency  of  the  prevailing  economic  system.  There  are  two 
more.  In  addition  to  the  production  of  "illth,"  we  find  the 
present  system  guilty  of  supporting  great  numbers  of  po- 
tential producers  in  idleness  on  any  given  working  day,  and 
we  find  that  even  when  workers  are  busy  producing  genuine 
goods,  the  technical  methods  which  they  employ  are  often 
prodigally  wasteful  of  raw  materials  and  human  effort 

During  the  starvation  time  in  the  Virginia  colony,  Captain 
John  Smith,  engineer-in-chief,  laid  down  the  rule  that  "only 
those  who  work  shall  eat."  Just  as  it  is  impossible  to  con- 
ceive, in  the  long  run,  of  an  economic  system  having  any 
other  justification  except  the  satisfaction  of  human  wants, 
so  is  it  impossible  to  conceive  of  any  other  rule  of  work  ex- 
cept that  laid  down  by  the  worthy  Captain.  If  we  live  in 
society  and  take  the  thousand  and  one  things  which  others 
have  made  for  us,  it  is  axiomatic  that  we  should  give  society 
something  in  return.  Even  defenders  of  the  present  order 
dare  not  run  counter  in  doctrine  to  this  fundamental  and 
instinctive  concept  of  justice,  no  matter  how  much  they  may 
run  counter  to  it  in  fact.  Thus  an  elaborate  mythology  has 
been  constructed  covering  the  compensating  services  of  the 
leisure  class — the  invaluable  quid  pro  quo  which  they  render 
society  by  "saving"  and  "abstinence,"  by  denial  and  morti- 
fication. Behind  the  cover  of  this  carefully  nurtured  doc- 
trine, the  idle  rich  can  pursue  their  pleasures  with  the  utmost 
moral  satisfaction. 

The  theory  of  waste  must  be  based  flatly  on  the  assump- 
tion that  all  able-bodied  adults  who  live  in  society,  must  give 
some  equivalent  for  what  they  take — this  equivalent  not  to 
consist  solely  in  moral  doctrine.  Libraries  of  books  could 
be  written,  and  unending  arguments  could  be  spun  as  to  what 
constitutes  an  "equivalent."  Is  it  measurable  in  hours, 
pounds  lifted,  hedonistic  units  or  the  net  precipitation  of 
swcciL  2'l^"<^s  ?    Obviously  all  attempts  to  make  a  nice  balance 

17 


between  debits  and  credits  in  these  premises  can  only  result 
in  a  good  deal  of  nonsense.  We  have  to  fall  back  on  the 
pragmatic  test.  Is  a  given  individual  able-bodied?  Is  he  a 
potential  worker,  or  a  genuine  dependent?  If  the  former, 
is  he  doing  something  which  contributes  to  the  wants  of 
man  as  we  have  stated  them?  Is  he  making  this  contribution 
according  to  the  best  of  his  ability,  and  on  the  basis  of  a 
reasonable  amount  of  time  expended?  From  this  standpoint, 
it  is  possible  to  analyze  the  performance  of  any  individual 
the  country  over,  and  to  determine  whether  or  not  he  is 
rendering  back  to  society  a  reasonable  equivalent.' 

Here  in  the  United  States  are  107  millions  of  people — 
men,  women  and  children.  They  are  all  consumers.  About 
thirty  million  men,  ten  million  women  and  two  million  chil- 
dren are  working  or  trying  to  get  a  chance  to  work.  They 
are  called  producers,  but,  as  we  have  seen,  in  the  case  of  many 
millions  of  them  the  term  is  ironic  because  of  the  "illth"  into 
which  their  effort  goes.  Another  eighteen  million  women 
are  working  hard  and  all  the  time — apparently  unaware  of 
8-hour  law  provisions — in  their  homes.  The  balance  of  the 
population — say  forty-seven  millions — is  made  up  of  de- 
pendents— children,  old  people,  sick  people,  defectives,  ho- 
boes, and  the  idle  rich. 

It  is  clear  that  each  of  the  forty-two  million  producers  has 
at  least  one  dependent  person  to  support  beside  himself — one 
and  one-half  to  be  exact.  With  this  load  of  dependents  al- 
ways upon  his  back  (and  under  a  more  humane  system  it  is 
probable  that  the  load  would  be  increased  by  keeping  children 
and  elderly  people  out  of  the  fields  and  factories),  it  be- 
comes imperative  that  all  available  persons  join  in  the  service 
of  producing  wealth. 

But  the  problem  of  idleness  is  not  primarily  a  problem  of 
shirkers.  After  all,  the  idle  rich  and  the  vagrants  do  not 
constitute  a  very  imposing  numerical  total — say  300,000  at 
the  outside.  No.  The  idleness  factor  of  waste  springs 
primarily  from  the  failure  of  the  present  system  to  provide 
opportunities  for  those  who  genuinely  desire  to  work.  It  is 
not  a  question  of  shirking,  it  is  a  question  of  closed  doors 
and  barred  fields. 

On  any  given  day,  from  four  to  eight  million  of  the  forty- 

''  I  have  repeatedly  tested  my  own  performance  and  that  of  many  of  my 
friends  with  this  standard. 

18 


two  million  potential  producers  are  idle.  This  means  four 
to  eight  million  man-days  wasted.  Who  are  these  idle 
people  ? 

First,  there  are  the  unemployed — two  million  in  the  best 
of  years,  five  to  six  million  in  such  years  as  1921. 

Secondly,  there  are  the  strikers  and  locked-out  workers. 
No  allowable  censure  can  attach  to  them  personally,  but  the 
naked  fact  remains  that  untold  millions  of  man-days  are 
lost  to  society  from  these  sources. 

Thirdly,  there  are  the  three  million  workers,  who,  on  any 
given  day,  are  sick  or  incapacitated.  It  has  been  estimated 
that  from  one-third  to  one-half  of  this  sickness  is  prevent- 
ible.  The  fraction — not  the  total — clearly  falls  under  the 
head  of  waste. 

Fourthly,  there  are  the  voluntary  loafers  and  the  idle  rich 
— the  only  genuine  shirkers. 

Adding  these  items  up,  we  see  that,  in  the  best  of  years, 
four  million,  or  about  10  per  cent  of  the  total  working  force, 
is  always  idle,  and  that  in  panic  years  like  1921,  at  least  eight 
million,  or  nearly  20  per  cent  is  idle. 

WASTES  IN  THE  TECHNICAL  PROCESS 

^  We  have  already  pointed  out  two  main  types  of  waste  as 
judged  from  the  standpoint  of  the  wants  of  man.  The  first 
is  waste  in  the  production  of  "illth,"  as  exemplified  by 
certain  patent  medicines;  the  second  is  the  waste  of  human 
idleness.  Now  we  come  to  the  third  and  last  great  classi- 
fication— waste  in  the  technical  process.  itselL  Thus  an  elec- 
tric light  company  may  be  engaged  in  the  altogether  excellent 
objective  of  manufacturing  light,  heat  and  power  for  the 
people  of  a  given  city,  but  it  may  be  hauling  coal  a  thousand 
miles  to  burn  it  inefficiently  under  boilers,  filling  the  city 
with  soot  and  dirt,  when  coal  distillation  at  the  pit-mouth 
with  high  tension  transmission  lines,  or  near-by  water-power, 
would  furnish  the  needed  wants  at  a  fraction  of  the  present 
cost. 

Here  the  student  of  waste  enters  a  vast  field  indeed.  The 
question  of  what  constitutes  the  best  technical  method  of 
supplying  man's  wants  is  a  never-ending  one.  It  ceases  only 
when  invention  and  scientific  research  cease.  Machinery  one 
hundred  per  cent  efficient  today,  may  be  worth  so  much  scrap 

19 


metal  tomorrow.  The  only  possible  course  to  pursue  under 
the  circumstances  is  to  take  the  most  approved  technical  pro- 
cess as  a  standard,  and  measure  the  gap  between  it  and  the 
process  actually  in  use,  after  making  due  allowance  for  the 
unproductive  labor  and  materials  needed  to  scrap  or  adjust 
the  old,  and  to  erect  the  new.  Only  zvlicn  it  is  clear  that 
more  can  be  gained  in  output  by  the  nezv  method,  than  will 
be  lost  in  the  cost  of  adjustment,  does  the  old  method  stand 
condemned  as  a  wasteful  one.  This  same  line  of  reason- 
ing would  seem  to  apply  to  the  economic  justification  of 
introducing  all  future  improvements  in  technical  processes. 

Measurements  in  this  field  may  be  approached  from  two 
angles.  First,  what  can  be  saved  by  rearrangement  and  a  re- 
routing of  the  production  flow  in  the  existing  plant  ("plant" 
including  both  the  productive  and  distributive  mechanism) 
without  embarking  to  an  appreciable  extent  on  new  con- 
struction. This  problem  was  tackled  by  the  Fuel  Admin- 
istration. Second,  what  can  be  saved  by  a  complete  recon- 
struction of  plant  in  line  with  the  present  state  of  the  tech- 
nical arts.  This  was  the  problem  of  the  Emergency  Fleet 
Corporation. 

Thus  it  is  possible  to  contemplate — and  perhaps  to  meas- 
ure roughly — the  saving  that  might  accrue  to  the  people  of 
the  United  States  if  the  existing  plant  were  utilized  solely 
to  satisfy  the  wants  of  man.  Or  it  is  possible  to  contemplate 
— but  probably  impossible  to  measure  —  the  saving  which 
might  accrue  if  the  existing  plant  were  drastically  reorgan- 
ized in  line  with  modern  scientific  knowledge — if  water- 
power  and  coal  distillation  were  developed  as  they  might  be ; 
if  beehive  ovens  in  the  coking  of  steel  were  replaced  by  by- 
product ovens;  if  the  chaos  of  retail  distribution  was  scrap- 
ped in  the  interest  of  properly  located  warehouses  and  sample 
stores;  if  the  pressure  of  skyscrapers  and  subways  on  city 
populations  were  removed ;  if  farming  and  fertilizing  pro- 
cesses were  co-ordinated  and  revised;  if  scientific  forestry 
replaced  timber-mining;  if  natural  gas  were  conserved  in- 
stead of  blown  ofif  into  the  air  by  the  billions  of  cubic  feet; 
in  short,  if  mankind  were  intelligent  enough  to  use  the  vast 
potentialities  of  its  existing  and  proved  knowledge  to  satisfy 
its  own  wants.  No  consideration  of  this  fascinating  field  is 
tenable,  it  must  be  repeated,  without  a  realization  of  the  im- 

20 


tnense  construction  cost  (measured  in  labor  energy  and  ma- 
terials) of  a  transition  period. 

— "it  is  in  the  field  of  applied  technical  knowledge  that  busi- 
ness men  and  engineers  have  recently  been  giving  marked 
consideration  to  the  question  of  waste.  Each  industry  pre- 
sents a  host  of  problems  in  both  its  production  and  distribu- 
tion aspects.  In  addition  the  whole  question  of  a  proper  co- 
ordination between  industries  demands  attention.  Modern 
economic  processes  are  so  interlocked  and  so  interrelated, 
that  it  is  practically  impossible  to  set  off  one  industry  by  it- 
self and  study  its  performance  as  a  separate  unit.  There  is 
no  industry  which  does  not  cut  across  the  field  of  other  in- 
dustries, either  in  respect  to  its  raw  materials,  its  sources  of 
power,  its  transportation  facilities,  its  distribution,  and  its 
markets. 

--^ome  day  perhaps  the  super-engineering  staff  will  come 
to  build  a  high  central  tower  from  which  not  only  coal  prob- 
lems but  all  industrial  problems  can  be  surveyed  and  meas- 
ured, and  intelligent  plans  laid  for  the  production  of  human 
wants  on  the  basis  of  a  minimum  of  friction  and  waste.  That 
such  a  staff  did  actually  function  in  England  during  the  war — 
though  its  aims  were  not  the  aims  which  concern  us  here — 
gives  us  hope  that  the  proposal  does  not  lie  outside  the  ad- 
ministration capacity  of  the  human  minct  , 

FAILURE  TO  UTILIZE  PRESENT  EQUIPMENT 

There  is  an  immense  amount  of  data  already  at  hand  in  re- 
spect to  wastes  in  technical  methods.  One  factor  which  has 
given  engineers  much  concern  is  the  chronic  failure  of  most 
industries  efficiently  to  utilize  their  equipment.  It  appears 
that,  on  the  basis  of  the  present  output,  they  are  on  the  aver- 
age about  40  per  cent  over-built.  That  is,  40  per  cent  of  their 
buildings,  machinery  and  other  physical  facilities  are  on  the 
average  never  used.  They  just  stand  as  silent  and  empty 
monuments  of  competitive  waste.  In  periods  of  business 
depression — certain  industries  such  as  the  building  trades^ 
will  drop  to  5  or  10  per  cent  capacity.^  There  are  three  times 
as  many  lumber  mills  in  the  country  as  are  needed  to  cut 
the  annual  supply  of  timber."  For  the  whole  year  1921,  the 

8  U.  S.   Department  of  Commerce,  Survey  of  Current  Business,  December, 
8  Benton    Mackaye.      Unpiihlished   manusci-ipt. 

21 


steel  mills  operated  at  less  than  40  per  cent  of  their  capac- 
ity/" There  are  a  third  too  many  soft  coal  mines  opened  on 
the  basis  of  either  consumption  needs  or  railroad  cars  to 
move  the  tonnage."  The  shoe  factories  can  turn  out  525 
million  pairs  of  shoes  a  year  on  an  -S-hour  day  basis,  while 
the  demand  never  exceeds  300  million  pairs." 

Engineers  and  statisticians  have  estimated  excess  capacity 
in  various  industries  as  follows : 

Men's  clothing 30  per  cent." 

Printing 50  per  cent." 

Boots  and  shoes 40  per  cent.^ 

Metal  trades 40  per  cent." 

Copper  and  brass 35  per  cent." 

Blast  furnaces 40  per  cent." 

Woolen   spindles 28  per  cent." 

Lumber  mills 67  per  cent.^ 

Brick  20  per  cent."^ 

Cement   25  per  cent.^ 

Ship  building 60  per  cent.^ 

Carpets  and  rugs 40  per  cent.^* 

Simple  average 40  per  cent. 

DESTRUCTION  OF  GOODS 

Even  when  the  industrial  plant"^  is  running,  we  find  that 
enormous  quantities  of  the  output  never  reach  the  consumer 
at  all  by  reason  of  defects  in  the  distribution  and  market 
mechanism.  In  a  period  of  so-called  "over-production,"  we 
see  night  riders  burning  tobacco  and  cotton,  corn  used  as 
fuel,  milk  dumped  into  rivers  by  the  thousands  of  gallons, 
one-half  of  the  potato  crop  rotting  in  the  ground,  carloads 

10  U.   S.  Department  of  Commerce,  op.   cit. 
"  Bru&re,  op.   cit. 

12  U.   S.  Council  of  National  Defense.     Studies  in  the  High  Cost  of  Living. 
^  Federated   American    Engineering   Societies,    op.    cit. 
i«  Ibid. 
IS  Ibid. 
M  /bid. 

"  Management  Engineering,  January,  1922. 
18  Walter   N.    Polakov,    Iron   and   Steel   Wastes. 

1*  U.  S.  Department  of  Commerce,  8ui~vei/  of  Current  B%tsincss,  December, 
1921. 

^  Mackaye,   op.   cit. 

21  Senate  Document  on  Reconstruction,  March,   1921. 

22  Ibid. 

23  U.  S.  Department  of  Commerce,  op.   cit. 
2*  Ibid. 

26  Including   farms,    factories   and   mines. 

22 


of  watermelons  floating  down  the  Potomac,  boat  loads  of 
bananas  in  the  waters  of  New  York  harbor,  textiles  and  ma- 
chinery "dumped"  in  foreign  markets  at  a  fraction  of  the 
price  the  domestic  consumer  is  forced  to  pay,  sugar  and  cof- 
fee crops  wantonly  destroyed.  Thus  even  if  the  efficiency  of 
the  productive  mechanism  chances  to  be  high,  there  is  always 
the  chance  that  this  very  fact  will  so  lower  the  efficiency  of 
the  distribution  mechanism — due  to  price  considerations — 
that  the  resulting  output  will  be  dumped  or  destroyed  rather 
than  permitted  to  reach  the  consumer  ,  .  .  the  same 
consumer,  it  must  be  remembered,  who  receives  considerably 
less  on  the  average  than  the  minimum  budget  of  health  and 
decency  calls  for. 

The  coal  industry  has  recently  been  subjected  to  a  bom- 
bardment from  the  standpoint  of  waste.  Engineers  have 
found  that  not  only  is  it  excessively  over-capitalized,  but  that 
its  underground  methods  are  so  bad  that  coal  miners — on  the 
days  when  they  get  a  chance  to  work — average  only  three  or 
four  hours  on  the  face  of  the  coal.^  The  articulation  of  the 
out-put  with  the  transportation  system  is  wretched.  The 
mines  can  dig  18,000,000  tons  a  week.  The  railroads  have  only 
cars  enough  to  carry  away  12,000,000  tons.  When  we  come 
to  the  utilization  of  coal,  the  scandal  grows  ever  greater.  The 
ordinary  steam  engine  only  secures  6  per  cent  of  the  thermal 
energy  contained  in  the  coal  which  it  burns.  Dr.  Charles  P. 
Steinmetz  has  estimated  that  perhaps  three-quarters  of  all 
coal  mined  could  be  saved  by  the  introduction  of  better 
methods  of  utilization.  Coal,  furthermore,  contains  great 
quantities  of  dyes,  tars,  fertilizers  and  other  valuable  by- 
products, which  are  now  largely  thrown  away. 

And  what  engineers  have  discovered  concerning  the  tech- 
nical wastes  of  coal  applies  pretty  well  down  the  line  to  all 
other  industries. 

A  SUMMARY 

Let  us  recapitulate  the  three  great  classes  of  waste  as  we 
have  tried  to  outline  them,  and  form  a  very  rough  estimate, 
if  we  can,  of  the  stupendous  total  involved. 

First,  there  is  the  waste  in  output  by  virtue  of  the  fact 
that  a  given  product  or  service  bears  no  relation  to  the  wants 

^  Archbald,    The  Four-Hour  Day  in  Coal. 

23 


of  man  as  defined.  How  much  of  the  total  output  of  Amer- 
ica falls  under  this  category  awaits  a  basic  survey.  Secretary 
Houston's  figures  on  super-luxury  production  alone  lead  us 
to  believe  that  not  less  than  one-third  of  the  total  labor  power 
of  the  country  is  lost  in  this  field.  And  that  means  the  la- 
bor power  of  about  14  million  persons. 

Secondly,  there  is  the  waste  by  virtue  of  idleness — the  fail- 
ure for  one  reason  or  another,  to  render  an  equivalent  for 
things  consumed.  This  we  saw  amounted  to  the  labor  power 
of  from  four  to  eight  million  able-bodied  persons,  depending 
upon  whether  business  was  booming  or  depressed. 

Thirdly,  there  is  the  waste  by  virtue  of  stupid  and  anti- 
quated technical  processes — both  in  the  mechanism  of  produc- 
tion and  of  distribution.  The  coal  industry  functions  at  less 
than  50  per  cent  efficiency  today  due  to  technical  causes — 
causes  which  can  be  remedied  without  an  undue  penalty  in 
new  construction  cost.  H  coal  be  any  criterion  for  industry 
in  general,  it  is  probable  that  one-half  the  labor  of  the  twenty- 
four  million  workers  who  are  now  making  and  distributing 
goods  and  services  which  satisfy  the  wants  of  man,  is  wasted 
labor  from  the  standpoint  of  modern  technical  methods.  And 
that  means  twelve  million  workers  more.    Recapitulating : 

Labor  lost  by  reason  of  producing  "illth" 

13,000,000  man  years 

Labor  lost  by  bad  technical  methods,  12,000,000  man  years 

Labor  lost  through  idleness  (average) 

5,000,000  man  years 


Total  labor  lost 30,000,000  man  years 

Total  productive  power,  1922 42,000,000  man  years 

Ratio  of  Waste,  70  per  cent. 

This  can  only  be  a  crude,  illustrative  estimate.  Some  en- 
gineers have  declared  that  the  ratio  of  waste  in  the  present 
system  is  90  per  cent.  Conservative  business  men  believe 
that  it  is  less  than  25  per  cent.  But  if  it  can  be  shown  that 
the  various  elements  of  waste  outlined  herein  aggregate  more 
than  50  per  cent  of  the  total  labor  power  of  America  (with 
corresponding  waste  in  raw  materials)  it  follows  relentlessly 
that  the  elimination  of  that  waste  would  double  the  capacity 
of  the  country  to  make  sound  goods  and  services  —  goods 
which  really  mean  the  satisfaction  of  human  wants.  And 
this  would  operate  to  banish  poverty,  to  raise  the  last  family 

24 


above  the  line  of  the  minimum  budget,  and  at  the  same  time 
to  provide  for  moderate  kixuries  and  comforts,  and  a  rea- 
sonably wide  range  of  income  levels. 

That  is  the  challenge  which  the  problem  of  waste  presents 
to  those  of  us  who  dream  of  a  high  central  tower  directing 
and  simplifying  the  economic  destinies  of  men. 

HUMAN  WASTES 

The  problem  as  we  have  outlined  it,  has  dealt  only  with  the 
wants  of  man,  and  the  possibility  of  measuring  the  sum  total 
of  labor  power  and  raw  materials,  which,  under  the  pre- 
vailing economic  system,  are  expended  to  other  ends.  Stud- 
ents of  waste  hitherto  have  tended  to  confuse  the  loss  due 
to  wasted  effort  with  the  effect  of  such  loss  on  human  life. 
"Human"  wastes  are  in  a  quite  different  category  from  la- 
bor and  material  wastes.  If  labor  and  material  wastes  are 
so  large  that  the  wants  of  man  are  not  adequately  met,  then 
and  only  then  do  human  wastes  arise.  They  are  in  the  na- 
ture of  a  deficiency  factor.  It  is  possible  to  conceive  of 
immense  labor  wastes,  resulting  in  no  human  wastes  at  all 
in  a  society  which  had  developed  labor-saving  machinery  to 
a  point  where  it  could  carry  all  sorts  of  irrelevant  activities, 
and  a  large  margin  of  idleness,  and  still  satisfy  human  wants. 

The  modern  industrial  system  however  has  reached  no 
such  point.  The  figures  of  national  income  already  examined 
prove  that.  The  normal  wants  of  more  than  half  the  popula- 
tion of  America — from  the  standpoint  of  the  minimum  bud- 
get— are  not  satisfied,  with  the  resulting  misery,  suffering 
and  human  cost. 

The  measurement  of  human  waste  largely  defies  the  sta- 
tistician. It  is  compounded  of  tears  and  pain  and  twisted 
souls.  It  carries  most  of  the  world's  crime  and  most  of  the 
world's  thwarted  aspirations.  In  its  embrace,  the  creative 
instinct  of  untold  millions  lies  buried. 

The  failure  of  the  present  industrial  mechanism  to  throw 
out  enough  of  the  goods  and  services  men  need,  together 
with  the  pressure  under  which  great  numbers  of  workers 
are  placed  by  reason  of  the  waste  and  loss  involved,  results 
in  these  outstanding  types  of  human  cost : 

Malnutrition ; 

Overcrowding ; 

25 


Inadequate  clothing ; 

Industrial  accidents  and  diseases; 

Infant  mortality; 

Illiteracy  and  undereducation ; 

Crime  and  prostitution ; 

Alcoholism  and  the  use  of  drugs ; 

Deadening  of  the  play  instinct ; 

Death  of  the  creative  instinct. 

The  human  cost  of  war  might  properly  be  added  to  this 
list.  War  implies  a  staggering  waste  in  labor  and  materials 
on  the  one  hand,  and  an  even  more  staggering  human  cost 
in  death,  wounds  and  social  degeneration  on  the  other.  The 
net  gain  appears  to  rest  solely  in  the  satisfaction  of  "national 
honor" — a  metaphysical  quality  lying  outside  the  wants  of 
man. 

In  1919  there  were,  in  the  United  States,  23,000  fatal  ac- 
cidents; 575,000  cases  of  injury  involving  at  least  four 
weeks  absence  from  work;  3,000,000  cases  of  injury  involv- 
ing more  than  one  day's  absence.  The  total  labor  days  lost 
amounted  to  296,000,000.  The  wage  loss  has  been  estimated 
at  $853,000,000.  Professor  Irving  Fisher  has  found  that  in 
industry  alone,  270,000,000  working  days  a  year  are  lost 
through  sickness,  of  which  about  40  per  cent  is  preventible. 
These  figures  give  some  idea  of  the  vast  extent  of  human 
waste. 

AND  FINALLY 

Modern  industry,  it  is  universally  conceded,  is  operated 
on  the  basis  of  production  for  profit.  The  usefulness  of  th^ 
thing  produced  is  a  by-product.  Realistic  defenders  of  the 
present  order  admit  this,  but  go  on  to  explain  that  the  pro- 
fit motive  provides  so  strong  an  incentive  for  production  that 
more  by  way  of  consumable  goods  is  thrown  off — even  as  a 
by-product — than  could  possibly  be  attained  under  any  sys- 
tem founded  on  production  for  use  only.  In  short,  it  is 
claimed  that  the  wayfaring  man  secures  a  greater  net  bene- 
fit from  the  profit  system — despite  its  left-handed  regard  for 
his  interests — than  he  could  from  any  system  designed  di- 
rectly to  serve  him. 

This  is  no  mean  argument.  It  brings  to  the  front  the 
whole  question  of  economic  incentives  to  invent,  produce, 
organize,  distribute.     We  have,  in  the  foregoing  analysis, 

26 


wa  ved  this  question  entirely.  We  have  assumed  that  men 
vnll  work  as  hard  to  supply  their  own  social  wants  as  to 
supply  stocks  bonds  and  mortgages  for  enterprising  busi- 
ness men  and  bankers.  And  on  the  basis  of  this  assumption 
we  have  noted  the  very  large  margin  of  waste  which  obtans 
Mechanically  speaking  this  waste  is  proveable-as  any  corn^ 
patent  engineering  survey  would  show  ^ 

r^n^hi  ^^V^  ^^  ^'^^^^  psychologically?    Is  mankind  at  large 

sTem  on  th?'"""^/"^.T"^"'"'"^  ^  "hole  industril! 
system  on  the  same  straight  line  methods  which  a  pioneer 
family  uses?  Or  does  human  intelligence  lag  and  faint  as 
the  unit  grows  bigger,  until  the  onl/ control  of  a  nat"on\ 
«'?  "  "  '"  ''■"'  ^^"'"^  ^^  ^^^  profit-s:ekTng 
Frankly  I  do  not  know.     I  have  only  the  exoerience  nf 

W  1  ^:tfT  'fi''  ''^^  '^  point  Vra"pos"ib 
hope     I  realize  that  the  whole  conception  of  waste  as  here- 
n  outlined  is  but  a  tilting  at  windmills  until  it  can  be  shown 
hat  men  are  capable  of  directing  their  own  industrial  dls 

anTUutf  Zflr^''\''h^'''''^  their  mtad 
Xhanengfof  W^^^^  "  "'^  ^^'^  P^^^P^'^^  -  -"^d  the 


'  27 


Bibliography  of 
Economic  Waste. 


BOOKS 

The  Engineers  and  the  Price  System.  Thorstein  Veblen. 
N.  Y.:  B.  W.  Huebsch,  1921;  169  pp. 

The  Theory  of  the  Leisure  Class.  Thorstein  Veblen.  N.  Y. : 
Macmillan,  1899;  400  pp. 

Old  Worlds  for  New.  A.  J.  Penty.  London:  G.  Allen  & 
Unwin,  Ltd.,  1917;  186  pp. 

The  Fallacy  of  Saving.     J.  M.  Robertson. 

Looking  Backward.  Edward  Bellamy.  Boston :  Houghton, 
Mifflin,  1898   (written  in  1889);  377  pp. 

Fields,  Factories  and  Workships.  P.  A.  Kropotkin.  Bos- 
ton: Houghton,  Mifflin,   1899;  315  pp. 

Socialism  in  Thought  and  Action,  Chap.  L  Harry  W.  Laid- 
ler.     N.  Y.:  Macmillan,  1920;  546  pp. 

Creative  Chemistry.     Slosson. 

The  Economic  Writings  of  Ruskin. 

Modern  Economic  Tendencies.  Sidney  A.  Reeve.  N.  Y. : 
E.  P.  Button  &  Co.,  1921;  871  pp. 

Waste  in  Industry.  Committee  on  Elimination  of  Waste 
in  Industry  of  the  Federated  American  Engineering  So- 
cieties (Hoover  Engineers).  N.  Y. :  McGraw-Hill  Co., 
1921;  409  pp. 

Luxury  and  Waste.     E.  J.  Warick. 

Direct  and  Indirect  Costs  of  the  Great  War.  E.  L.  Bogart. 
N.  Y. :  Oxford  University  Press,  1919;  338  pp. 

Cooperation,  the  Hope  of  the  Consumer.  Harris.  N.  Y. : 
Macmillan,  1918. 

Poverty  and  Waste.  Hartley  Withers.  London:  Smith, 
Elder  &  Co.,  1914;  180  pp. 

The  Conservation  of  Natural  Resources  in  the  U.  S.  Van 
Hise.     N.  Y. :  Macmillan. 

Triumph  of  Nationalization.  Sir  Leo  Chiozza  Money.  Lon- 
don: Cassell  &  Co.,  Ltd.,  1920;  275  pp. 

America's  Power  Resources.  Chester  G.  Gilbert  and 
J.  E.  Pogue     N.  Y.:  Century,  1921;  326  pp. 

The  Economics  of  Petroleum.  Joseph  E.  Pogue.  N.  Y. : 
John  Wiley  &  Sons,  1921;  375  pp. 

The  Coming  of  Coal.  Robert  W.  Bruere.  N.  Y. :  Associ- 
ated Press,  1922;  229  pp. 

28 


The  Four-Hour  Day  in  Coal,    Hugh  Archbald.    N.  Y. :  Har- 
court  &  Brace,  1922. 

The    World's    Food    Resources.      J,    Russel    Smith       N     Y  • 
Henry  Holt,  1919;  634  pp.  "      " 

Forest  Products — Their  Manufacture  and  Use.     Nelson  C 

Brown. 

Our   Railroads   Tomorrow,      Edward   Hungerford.      N.   Y. : 

Wealth    from    Waste.      Henry    John    Spooner.      London: 
Routledge,  1918;  312  pp. 

ARTICLES  AND  PAMPHLETS. 

Waste.    W.  R.  Ingalls.  Mining  &  Metallurgy.    March,  1922. 

Fifty  Points  About  Capitalism.  Sir  Leo  Chiozza  Money 
(l^amphlet).  London:  C.  Palmer  &  Hayward  1919-  50 
pp.  '  ' 

Wasting  Human  Life,     A.M.Simons.     (Pamphlet).     Chi- 
cago: Socialist  Party;  96  pp. 
Delimitation    and    Transmutation    of    Industries.      Sir    Leo 

Chiozza  Money.    New  Statesman.    March  14,  1914. 
Conservation  Through  Engineering.     U.  S.  Geological  Sur- 
vey Bulletin  No.  705. 

Wastes   of   Uneven  Production,      C.   E.   Knoeppel.      (Pam- 
phlet). 

Plant  Idleness.     W.  N.  Polakov.     Factory,  April,  1922. 

^T*^  ^^c,F°°^  Handling.    A.  H.  Kirchhofer.    N.  Y.  Mail, 

Study  in   Distribution   Costs.     Joint   Committee   of  Agri- 
cultural Inquiry.     Congress,  1922. 

"Toctr/n't  No!'"'l9''-°'*""°"-     "'*  ''°"^"^^-     Senate 
Wasting  Coal.     Stuart  Chase.     Labor  Age,  May,  1922. 

'^''a^ry  2^3"?9^21°^  ^^'*^'     ^*"^'**  ^^^'^'     '^"^*'^"'  ^^^^"- 

''"I'l!^^'*"  '"  ?T^^' J"^o'o*<ry-    ^-  ^-  Cutler  in  Mechanical 
hngtyieering,  March,  1922. 

Timber  Depletion,  Report  of.     U,  S,  Forest  Service 

^June,'r92L  ^'^^  ^nd^^fy.    Federal  Trade  Commission, 

Waste   in    Industrial   Power  Plants.      David   Moffet  Mvprq 

Management  Engineering,  December,  1921. 
Super  Power  Report  of  the  Geological  Survey,  1921 
^March"'\*l2^"*"-      ^^^^^^^^    Coleman.      Labor   Age, 
29 


LEAGUE  FOR  INDUSTRIAL  DEMOCRACY 


The  League  for  Industrial  Democracy,  organized 
in  1921  as  a  successor  to  the  Intercollegiate  Socialist 
Society,  has  for  its  object,  "education  for  a  new- 
social  order  based  on  production  for  use  and  not  for 
profit."  It  aims,  in  other  words,  to  bring  the  chal- 
lenge of  industrial  democracy  before  the  American 
people,  by  every  effective  educational  method  at  its 
command. 

COLLEGE  PROGRAM 

Its  educational  program  includes  activities  both 
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engaged  in  publishing  and  distributing  a  popular, 
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30 


3.  Sustaining  members,  $25. 

4.  Life  members,  $100. 

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Those  believing  in  the  principle  of  production 
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Members  receive  the  literature  and  announce- 
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All  in  sympathy  with  the  aims  of  the  League  are 
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out  to  do  in  bringing  about  a  higher  order  of  indus- 
trial society. 


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LEAGUE  FOR  INDUSTRIAL  DEMOCRACY, 
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"Irrepressible  America."  By  Dr.  Scott  Nearing.  1922. 
32  pp.  A  trenchant  analysis  of  the  social  thinking  of 
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cational work  that  must  be  done  if  a  better  social 
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"The  Express  Companies  of  the  United  States."  By  Ber- 
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ownership  and  control  of  express  companies 10 

"Freedom  in  the  Workshop."  By  Felix  Grendon.  1920. 
A  brilliant  essay  on  the  human  effects  of  control  of 
the  nation's  workshops  by  the  nation's  producers.   .  .      .10 

"Public  Ownership  Throughout  the  World."  By  Dr.  Harry 
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of  public  ownership  here  and  abroad  immediately 
before  and  during  the  world  war,  and  an  appraisal 
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"Study  Courses  in  Socialism."  Compiled  by  Dr.  Harry 
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